Indexable IDX Questions

OMG!!   I did not understand a word to begin with, but began to understand quite a bit by the end of reading all of that!     Thanks!!!

I'm no SEO expert, that's for sure.

I understand indexed IDX pages are "transient". ie: they won't be there long.

I also know for a fact  that four people visited my blog in the last 20 minutes by Googling an address. One came via Googling an MLS number.

They were all presented with #1 results in their searches with a page from my indexed IDX (pages the DS plugin generated). Of those five visitors, three went into the full IDX search, and two are still there 20 minutes later.

January will be my second highest monthly unique visitor count ever. A significant portion of those visitors are landing on pages that are indexed IDX listings.

We've also had increased contacts in the way of search registrations, contact forms submitted, emails received and phone calls.

Seems to be working pretty well... I could give a crap about page rank, page latency, whatever. If people register for searches, email, and call, then that's good enough for me.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense I was on my way to bed when I decided to check in - wow you guys have been busy here.

SEO value of framed sites - minimal at best. Some can't be indexes, others are not semantically correct and the rare few that do get a framed page here or there indexed are not getting their website indexed. They are getting their IDX company indexed which provides little value in most cases.  It's not content on your site and doesn't contribute to the big picture for you site which is for it to be content rich. Framed IDX's I think are best used for a great user search experience.

Duplicate content / Who will get indexed / Who will be higher in the SERPs - It can't be a duplicate if Google doesn't see it. Like I said before most sites will not get 1000s of pages crawled. IMO I think those that do will have a harder time competing in smaller areas with some sites that focus their Google Juice on specific areas or communities getting indexed. National->State->City->Community->Tract->Property Don't try and do to much to soon.  Don't spread your Google Juice to thin. I suspect those that inserting a property or lists of properties in an area (that automatically keep updating) in with related unique content are getting a leg up and often ranking higher in the SERPs for those result pages over someone who doesn't. We are seeing Google index the results pages first then they move on a few days or weeks later and start indexing the property details. A good rule of thumb is design your site architecture and content for your clients. If they find it useful most likely Google will to. There isn't silver bullet for this that will work for everyone. These are mearly ingredients for you to make something Google wants to eat.

@greg - What Jay is reporting is not much different than other reports that we are getting from other customers. Traffic from a whole new set of keywords leading to pages you never had before on your site qualifies as an increase in traffic.

Greg wrote: "Almost any one you ask would tell you there traffic has gone up last month due to more traffic on the net, not because 100's of people are searching for specificMLS numbers. Sounds like you are strecthing the facts a bit. But I guess that is your M.O. You seem to be a little full of yourself. But that ios most of what goes on here at AR (bid mushy love fest)"

Stretching the facts? What would be the point in that Greg? Facts can be verified, and before you accuse someone you don't know of lying, you might want to consider that.

Screensnip of Google Analytics. Note the increase in visits at end of December - to date.  This coincides with installing the dsIDXPress plugin.

This isn't a seasonal thing, it's a shift in traffic pattern. I don't know that there is "more traffic on the net". But I do know that having the second highest traffic count in almost five years, when there is no other one-off news story or similar cause (and where deeper analysis shows how many are landing on these IDX pages) is not an insignificant fact.

As for the number coming to the blog and landing initially on indexed IDX pages, here's a screen snip in real time. Red arrows point to visitors who arrived on IDX pages.

Greg, you are welcome to judge me and gather an opinion that I'm full of myself. I'd argue that most who know me would disagree with you, but it's your opinion and you are entitled to it.

But please don't question my integrity by saying I'm stretching the facts.

I agree with a number of the "experts" here, and especially what Bob and Damon said.

Remember - search engines are trying to find the most RELEVANT results for a given keyword search, so that those people keep using that search engine.

You can and many people will be able to game the system from time to time, but then Google will go and change their algorithm, and poof, you are gone from the results. 

Think like a human, use good practices, and you'll probably end up with more CLOSINGS, which is what it's all about, am I right fellow agents?

p.s. Jeff, thanks so much for this post and the ensuing conversation - it was WAY overdue!

Gee I want Jay Thompson's blog traffic... I came from a tweet about his stats being questioned... or his intergrity.   I was ignoring this post although I read it when it was first published.   I am in a market where we are supposed to link to our brokers IDX....  so as interesting as this is...

My own thoughts (not worth the two cents) are that the first movers may see a value from the indexed IDX.  After a while, it might not matter as much, but they will still be better to have than framed IDX...  I want to have my IDX indexed...

Jeff, Interesting dialog going on - actually came in from a not so complimentary comment out there about us here in the Rain.  BUT, I stand with Maureen, we too are obliged to use our companies IDX.   That being said, I do see where an address that was search for pulls in an inquiry from the 3rd party sites where our listings are posted.  IF I had a choice would I want to have my IDX indexed - you bet.  But as Jay states, it's not the placement we look for it's the number of clients raising their hand to use our services.

P.S. - I second you Jeff, Jay is a very straight forward and honest guy!

Justin suspects right about one thing. Bob is correct about some and wrong about another. Jay says Yay! but cares not why.

Imagine.

What would happen in a market where an agent does discover how to use MLS listings in a way that gets "results" and "details" pages - All indexed, All ranked in the #1 or #2 spot on Google, and ALL automatically structured to correctly boost the rank of each other and non-MLS related pages and hyper-local blog posts on the same and other sites? Say they only get 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 MLS related pages indexed.

Wow.

Do you think that agent (or company) would share those strategies on ActiveRain or even sell them knowing that to do so would kill her advantage as quickly as other savvy folks could copy the strategies?

Or do you suppose that agent would implement them in her market and other markets as quickly as possible to suck up and convert as much traffic as possible?

The SEO strategies to do this are not complicated.

The technology and programming pieces are not complicated either.  

The key is thinking a little creatively - outside the box of most folks' speculations.

Great questions Jeff. This SEO/SEM? stuff gives me a headache!

Getting indexed is not as complicated as it sounds. If you have relevant creative content that you update often you will get ranked,  The problem is that many don't want to put in the time and instead delegate it away.

yer not to late Chris...for us fanatics anyway.

You had to give away that tidbit didn't you. It is one way to do it. However, don't get caught.

Most MLSs prevent the addition of other content to the listings page, though they usually let links, menus, and sidebar content slide. They also don't like you do use an "unapproved" version which this might be if it's different then the design shown to them by the idx vendor or yourself.

The way you might be able to do this is if the content you add - I hope you have a ghostwriter for 100,000 listings : )  - would be to sort of Box/Shade-in your own content, or the MLS listing content so it would look very distinct.

Anyway, the companies that are releasing Wordpress plugins gotta be a little careful, lest a clever agent with some programming skills really takes apart the data feed to use it for his own nefarious purposes, or they get whacked for embedding listing content in posts in violation of the MLSs rules.

Very interesting post and comments as well. I've been searching for a new IDX provider but now think it would be best to have a custom made solutions so i don't have to frame someone else's. Can anyone direct me to someone who can design an IDX for me?  I'm in Los Angeles, if that makes a difference.  Thanks!

Hello, Jeff, from a former Charlotte resident.

I've recently had the dubious pleasure of setting up a dsIDXpress-enabled blog for Phoenix real estate agent Joe Janus. Lemme tell you: going head to head with Monster Blogger (and friend) Jay Thompson is a scary proposition.

Joe and I been pleased that our rather low expectations have been exceeded. Joe isn't getting the huge numbers that Jay gets, and we never really expected that he would. However, I'm seeing him coming out ahead of Jay Thompson in Google search results surprisingly often. Jay agrees with my conjecture that Joe's blog may do well for things like searches in historic districts because his well-ranked regular web site has a wealth of text content on historic neighborhoods. I've posted an article with more details and a screen capture of Joe's Google Analytics page.

The screen capture of Joe's blog stats is enlightening because it will show that almost all the searchers used addresses or MLS numbers to search and eventually reach his blog; these are very different from the "generic" keyphrases with which people find his web site. So, after only three weeks Joe is currently  getting around 20 visitors day that his regular web site is missing. These extra visitors are like cream on top of the 150-200 visitors per day that his regular web site gets.

Also, a word of warning: the number of pages that Google Webmaster Tools says it has indexed for Joe's blog -- 5 -- apparently bears no relationship to the number of listings pages that it has indexed. That should be obvious just from looking at Joe's Google Analytics page. I was very frustrated at first because GWT kept telling me that 5 pages had been indexed. I thought there was something wrong with the plug-in. But eventually the numbers of daily visitors just started creeping up while the number of indexed pages indicated in GWT stayed the same.

Is ListingPress.com still around? None of the links on their site work.

Jeff, an update on Joe Janus's dsIDXpress-enabled blog. It is now getting around 100 visitors per day, while his regular web site is getting around 150. 

I've recently discovered Myrsol.com, an SC web developer and site host that offers true integrated listings along with a features list that's to die for. I just finished my first site hosted and Myrsol and have totally fallen in love with the system and the guys there as well. Myrsol does a true integrated feed by programming an MLS board's feed directly into the site. My client's site's traffic has jumped already in the first week since the site went live, and he is thrilled to have already gotten some two dozen leads. Great system! I highly recommend it -- and they have already programmed the Charlotte feed.

I use a company that puts RETS feeds in the Amazon Cloud and manages the data for us, so we can build any kind of IDX-Home Search site we want with any features we want using Amazon libraries and many easy programming languages.

(We use php on the yii framework. A WP plugin with all kinds of SEO stuff (not for sale) is our latest project built off our experience with ListingPress before the company shut down.)

Having full access to MLS data can let you create thousands of SEO pages with any SEO structure you want. If you're frustrated that your IDX provider has a crappy URL structure and only repeats the keyphrase/address once:

- Build your own site so the address is in the url at the beginning and repeated in H1, etc...tags several times throughout the page. There aren't any MLS rules against that : ) though there are against some of the things you could try to do.

- Build a macro that turns all your brokerages listings into videos with music or text to speech and then automatically submits the videos to 35 video sharing sites WITH data like addresses, keyphrases like Chicago Homes, placed into the video title, description, etc...

www.RETS2Cloud.com is the company.

RETS2Cloud just manages data which - to do really well so that the data is served up quickly and is stored efficiently - can be tricky.

Here's what you can shoot for...

Most real estate websites turn less than 1% of visitors into leads.

The best Home Search site/Lead Generation companies and internet savvy brokerages like Redfin (probably) capture leads at between 10-15% on average. That's a good ROI if you have a killer CRM and follow-up system. 

Our newest search site will have a 20% or more lead capture rate or we'll change them until they do and since we have direct access to the data, we can tweak to our hearts content!

If you talk to an IDX company the only question you need answered is -- what is their lead capture rate from PPC traffic and organic traffic? Well, you might also ask them about their Return rate.  If they aren't fibbing, they can show you the analytics.

Good luck! Pursuing the creation of the best Home Search site is my Great White Whale.

- Ahab

Jay, google analytics 2009 - January 2010 - am I missing something???  I am also in a state where we are supposed to link to a brokers site, I am in real estate hell.

Miriam - I think what you're missing is the date this post (and my comments) were made. Jeff posted this article on Jan 26 *2010*. I commented a couple of days later. So at the time I posted a link to my stats, they were current...

I've got agent friends in Louisiana, so I understand your pain. Hard to believe in this day and age there are still rules in place that are so.... 1975.